From my personal point of view, the role of a program evaluator is to gather information about the thoughts and experiences of individuals impacted by the program and to use the findings to inform program improvement. However, participants in the evaluation may be reluctant to share their full thoughts due to factors such as power imbalances and a…

To engender and raise awareness to the geosciences, a geoscience research project and a corresponding geoscience internship program were designed around plume dispersion dynamics within and above the New York City subway system. Federal, regional, and local agencies partnered with undergraduate students from minority-serving institutions to…

Teaching entrepreneurship--how to create, grow and run a business or organization--is one potential means to increase college and career readiness skills. Learning how to start a business can improve critical thinking, communication and collaboration (Gallagher, Stepien, & Rosenthal, 1992; Hmelo, 1998), which are key qualities for academic as…

Out-of-school time programs are well-positioned to enhance students' Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) skills, increase their interest in STEM fields, and increase their engagement in learning overall. In its 2011 Request for Proposals (RFP) for Out-of-School Time (OST) programs for youth in the elementary and middle grades, the…

The Robert Bowne Foundation for out-of-school time (OST) supports the development of quality programs that offer literacy education in the out-of-school hours to children and youth of New York City, especially young people from disadvantaged communities. The foundation's networking meetings, now in their 10th year, offer quarterly forums in which…

Background: The State University of New York (SUNY), the nation's largest comprehensive public university system, recently proposed making experiential learning activities available to all students enrolled in an academic program. Each campus was tasked with examining the feasibility of including experiential learning activities as a degree…

This manuscript, written with the educator in mind, describes the Youth Historians in Harlem (YHH) program, a twenty-week after-school history program that engaged urban students in history by immersing them in aspects of the historical process. Throughout the program, a group of Black male high school students were apprenticed as historical…

Students with learning disabilities (LD's) in inclusion classrooms often face both academic and social difficulties (Alesi, Rappo, & Pepi, 2014; Clever, Bear, & Jovonen, 1992; Lavoie, 2005; Madge, Affleck, & Lowenbraun, 1990; McIntosh, Vaughn, Schumm, Haager, & Lee, 1993; Mercer & Pullen, 2009; Nowicki, 2003). Research on…

This Special Issues Brief from the Collaboration for Effective Educator Development, Accountability and Reform (CEEDAR Center) and the Center on Great Teachers and Leaders (GTL Center) outlines essential features for providing high-quality, structured, and sequenced opportunities to practice within teacher preparation programs. This brief is…

Queensborough Community College and Houston Community College are two large, urban institutions that offer learning communities for their developmental math students, with the goals of accelerating students' progress through the math sequence and of helping them to perform better in college and ultimately earn degrees or certificates. They are…

Queensborough Community College and Houston Community College are two large, urban institutions that offer learning communities for their developmental math students, with the goals of accelerating students' progress through the math sequence and of helping them to perform better in college and ultimately earn degrees or certificates. They are…

Educators are committed to understanding one another in their community as they explore their diversity. The home visit unit of study represents one of the earliest examples of "student research" done at the school where these authors teach, which serves children in pre-kindergarten classes through grade eight. A home visit is a field…

An on-line survey was conducted among a university's department chairs in an effort to gain perspective on university-wide use of Experiential Learning (EL). While there were differences in cross-disciplinary definitions and perspectives regarding EL, ninety-one per cent of 35 department chairs indicated their department made use of EL with…

This paper presents results from a rigorous random assignment study of Learning Communities programs operated at three of six community colleges participating in the National Center for Postsecondary Research's (NCPR) Learning Communities Demonstration. The demonstration's focus is on determining whether Learning Communities are an effective…

Exploring the Solar System in the elementary school curriculum has traditionally involved activities, such as building scale models, to help students visualize the vastness of space and the relative size of the planets and their orbits. Today, numerous websites provide a wealth of information about the sun and the planets, combining text, photos,…